Changing theme back removes widgets

  • Halo Diehard

    (@halo-diehard)


    11 years, 9 months ago

    Hello, I have been having this problem and I’m trying to track down what exactly is responsible for it.

    When I’m having trouble and need to test if it’s a plugin, I follow the instructions to put my theme in a default theme and inactivate plugins to troubleshoot. However, every single time I do this, I have widgets that are no longer in my sidebar of my original theme once I switch back.

    Also, not all of the widgets that disappear can be found in the unused widget area, which means I have to reset all of the information in every single one of them.

    I know where to report this behavior, because I don’t know if it’s being caused by WordPress, the theme or the individual widgets.

    The behavior I am looking for is that the widgets return to where they were with the settings they had when I return my website to it’s theme after testing.

    Thank you for any illumination on this subject 😀

    Here is a link to my site: http://www.halodiehards.net

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • sffandom

    (@sffandom)

    11 years, 9 months ago

    WordPress has no way of knowing in advance — when you change a theme — if the new theme can support all the widget areas and widgets you were using with the old theme, so it resets to a default mode.

    This is the intended “safe” behavior. I don’t believe you’ll make much headway with the developers on allowing some sort of override.

    Thread Starter Halo Diehard

    (@halo-diehard)

    11 years, 9 months ago

    I don’t understand. A ton of my widgets do *not* reset, so something is in place that can prevent this. And more often than not if the widgets don’t go back to where they already were, they will go into the unused widgets, so I just have to drag them back, which isn’t as bad. So *Something* is in place, or this behavior wouldn’t occur.

    You said “it resets to default mode” not sure what you are referring to here, the sidebar or the widget. Neither appear to reset to default mode consistently. Many times I have changed themes and changed back and everything was just the way I left it.

    It seems to me that a conflict is occurring, as this behavior seems to be getting worse with each update. Of course I have switched themes in the last couple months too, because the old one became obsolete, but I never had this trouble back then.

    So really, what you are saying doesn’t make sense to me.

    Edit: and I don’t understand why a theme wouldn’t have a setting to remember what widgets you are using for it.

    sffandom

    (@sffandom)

    11 years, 9 months ago

    I maintain several dozen WordPress installations and I can only tell you what I have seen happen when I change themes: the widgets generally don’t change with the themes. It may be that if a plugin creates a widget then the widget may stay in place.

    For example, if you switch from a theme using two sidebars to a theme using one sidebar you can’t expect the widgets to all end up on the one sidebar.

    Whatever the case, the behavior you describe is very common.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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